Debating "The mirror of production" by Jean Baudrillard
Marx with Bataille

Subsequent to our discussion about commoning in autonomist Marxism, we will discuss Baudrillard's deconstruction of productivism that he has developped in his early text "The mirror of production" in 1973.

In the discourse of commons, two ideas are projected into another, the analysis of social division as source of inequality and the constitution of a new figure of equality, the community of fraternal workers, in which doing that makes what is to be held in common is dedicated to solidarity.

In opposition to this idea of workers as artisans of commons, Baudrillard turns to Bataille's idea of unproductive expenditure by stating that Marx's materialism is haunted by the categories of political economy he has criticized.